HADLEY – The University of Massachusetts, which hopes to build solar panels to generate 2.4 megawatts of electricity to sell on 10 acres it owns off North Maple Street, wants more time before presenting the idea to the Hadley Conservation Commission.

At Tuesday’s meeting, when the UMass proposal was scheduled to be heard, the commission chairman Paul Alexanderson said the school may be having second thoughts.

He said that is because the property, although currently used for farming, is a designated wetland. The chairman said it would be problematic to build an industrial size solar generating facility on that land while complying with the Wetlands Protection Act. The commission, at the university’s request, rescheduled the public hearing until Feb. 18.

Alexanderson said permitting an industrial use, such as energy-generating solar panels, is much more intensely regulated than an agricultural use on wetlands.

“The Conservation Commission deals with wetlands issues – that site has lots of wetlands issues . . . which is one of the reasons they did not come tonight,” Alexanderson said.

“The idea was to come to some kind of design and still have the sheep underneath them [the solar panels],” he said. “There are a lot of problems with this site.”

Alexanderson said an electricity generating solar array “is not farming anymore,” adding that the UMass proposal “is trying to mix the two.”

Among the handful of residents attending the Jan. 14 meeting was Melba and David Jensen. Their Plainville Road home abuts the university’s farm on North Maple Street.

“We are adjacent to the UMass farm and came to find out what their plans are,” Melba said in an interview.

“We wanted to see what it would look like,” her husband added. “It will certainly change the look of things.” Alexanderson told residents that hard copies of the plans are on file for public viewing at the Town Clerk’s office.

A statement on the UMass Center for Agriculture’s website says: “Utilities and power developers are buying farmland, removing it from agricultural production permanently, and placing photovoltaic solar arrays on the land. This research effort is investigating the possibility of dual use of farm land for agricultural and photovoltaic electrical power generation.”

During the meeting Hadley’s conservation administrator Janice Stone said the project proponents “still have some homework to do on this site.”